


Bane of the Doctor - Part 11: The Doctor, Broken

by RodimusDoctor



Series: Bane of the Doctor [12]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Brainwashing, Gen, Multiple Doctors (Doctor Who), Psychological Trauma, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-25
Updated: 2014-07-25
Packaged: 2018-02-10 07:54:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2016981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RodimusDoctor/pseuds/RodimusDoctor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The 11th Doctor has finally found his 10th incarnation, broken and ripe for brainwashing. Dirge Manson prevents the Doctor from helping his former self, and forces him to watch the brainwashing process. The Scarecrow becomes an unexpected ally, but the Doctor has even more tricks up his sleeves. And in his coat pockets...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bane of the Doctor - Part 11: The Doctor, Broken

The Doctor was rarely at a loss for words, especially in his eleventh incarnation. As he stared down into the face of his previous self, however, words failed him completely.

That was me, he thought. And though his memory of that time was spotty and inconsistent, he knew the damage that had been done only too well. His 8th self had helped him when this experience had been triggered...

Perhaps he could help himself now. He reached down for the 10th Doctor’s head...

A strong hand closed around his wrist and yanked him around. The Doctor looked up into the face of Dirge Manson, the man responsible for his previous incarnation’s condition. Before he could get well and truly worked up about it, Dirge punched him hard in the face.

“Ow,” the Doctor said from the floor where he’d fallen. “Always with the punching! Can’t you just stand there and make death threats like a normal villain?” He felt his nose; it was broken and gushing blood.

“I am not a normal villain, Doctor,” Dirge Manson said. “And that was for making me shit my pants in front of my father and the other cadets.”

“I knew that would come back to haunt me,” the Doctor untied his bowtie and held it under his nose. “At the time, there really wasn’t any other way to... oof!”

“Stop talking,” Manson said, retracting his foot from the Doctor’s stomach. “And that was for the incident with the skulls.”

The Doctor knew it would be smart to shut up, but his mouth was already moving.

“Are you going to hit me for everything you think I’ve done to you?” he said. “Look at me, lying there,” he indicated his other self on the cot. “Haven’t you put me through enough?”

“No,” Dirge said, and he kicked him in the stomach again. “What you did to me was bad enough, Doctor. But I can forgive that. As for what you did to my father,” he reached down, grabbed the Doctor by the front of his shirt and lifted him into the air, “that I can never forgive.”

“I suppose that’s fair,” the Doctor looked up at Dirge. “After all, I will never forgive your father. Or Madame Kovarian. Or that entire order, for that matter.”

Dirge smiled a wide, humourless smile.

“Well, there’s something we have in common,” he said. “Stick around, Doctor, I want you to see this.”

Before the Doctor could reply, Dirge threw him across the room and into the nearest wall. The Doctor fell to the floor again, his mind already in darkness.

 

The Doctor awoke to find himself once more Dirge Manson’s prisoner. He sat in a metal chair, his arms and legs cuffed and immobile.

Ahead of him, the 10th Doctor sat upon a similar chair. His arms and legs were also cuffed, and a contraption on the back of the chair kept his head facing the large screen in front of him. On that screen...

The Doctor decided not to look at it. No sense getting brainwashed twice.

Dirge Manson was not in the room. In the left hand corner was the cot the 10th Doctor had laid upon, with the 11th Doctor’s blazer draped over it.

The Doctor tested his manacles briefly; there would be no escaping them without help. Time to get some, he thought, so he drew in a breath and started whistling. Not pleasantly; the tweets he made were increasingly sharp, shrill and piercing. So much so that he didn’t notice the door opening beside him.

“Well you’re a happy one.”

The Doctor turned his head to see who’d come in. He’d expected Dirge to return, but he was only slightly surprised to see the Scarecrow instead.

“Very useful device, this,” he said, holding up the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver. “It used to be so difficult breaking out of my lab, but this,” he flipped it in the air and caught it, “makes it child’s play.”

“I know! Isn’t it a beauty?” the Doctor replied. “And here’s a trick. If you adjust the settings ever so slightly...”

“...I could pop the locks on your chair and free you,” the Scarecrow finished for him.

“Could it? That honestly hadn’t occurred to me.”

“Indeed,” the Scarecrow said, turning to glance around the room. “That’s you over there, isn’t it? Is it strange, Doctor, to be locked in a room with yourself?”

“The novelty wears off after the fifth time,” he replied.

“And yet,” the Scarecrow leaned in close, “it must be quite frightening, seeing yourself being programmed for some unspeakable evil while you sit here, helpless to prevent it.”

“I’m only afraid that you aren’t going to stop talking,” the Doctor replied. “Which, coming from me, is really quite funny. What do you want, Doctor Crane? I don’t imagine you came in here just to taunt me.”

“How long has it been?” the Scarecrow asked. “Since you were him, I mean. A hundred years? Two hundred?”

“I’m honestly not sure any more,” the Doctor told him. “I tend to lie about my age. Besides, I have no idea how long you and Manson have had me prisoner here.”

“Oh, I had nothing to do with that,” the Scarecrow said. “I’m just here to make the gas, Doctor. A job for which I have a feeling I won’t be paid.”

“Are you expecting a better offer from me?” the Doctor asked.

“You don’t appear to be in a very effective bargaining position,” the Scarecrow pointed out, waggling his sonic at him.

“And yet, here you are,” the Doctor fired back. “I offer you a trip back to Gotham City, around the same time that Manson collected you.”

“Not interested,” the Scarecrow told him. “Neo Gotham, New Earth, this century. Dirge promised me great wealth. Can you match that?”

“I could,” the Doctor replied, “but I’m not going to. A trip home, Doctor Crane, to your proper place in space and time. That’s my offer. Take it or leave it.” The Doctor looked away, and resumed whistling.

“I think I’ll take my chances with Manson!” the Scarecrow snapped.

“Suit yourself.” More whistling.

The Scarecrow turned to leave.

And came face-to-fist with Dirge Manson. He collapsed to the floor, his nose bleeding under his mask, the sonic skittering out of his hand and across the floor.

“You should have listened to the Doctor,” Dirge said, standing over the fallen Scarecrow. “Not that it would have done you any good. All these rooms are bugged now. Nothing escapes me. Not even that damned whistling!” He pivoted on his right foot and backhanded the Doctor’s face hard enough that it snapped back and bonked the wall behind him.

“Is this always how you’ve dealt with people?” the Doctor asked. Manson ignored him and kicked the Scarecrow in the stomach. “I see. No wonder you never made any friends.”

Dirge, who’d been about to put the boot in once more, froze. Tensed.

“I suppose being the son of Colonel Runaway didn’t help,” the Doctor went on. “A ready-made excuse to grow into a very bad man. You didn’t even have to try.”

Dirge Manson turned around, slowly, and faced the Doctor. His face was grave but controlled, his temper held in check but just barely.

“And you don’t have to try, Doctor,” he told him, “to provoke me. I was born hating you.”

“Yes, you’re quite good at it,” the Doctor said. And he whistled again.

“Stop that,” Dirge said, and he slapped the Doctor’s face.

“Ow! Bloody hell,” the Doctor said, his left cheek stinging. “I nearly had it that time.”

“Nearly had what?” Dirge asked, curious despite himself.

On the floor behind him, the Scarecrow pulled back his right sleeve to expose the nozzle of his gas sprayer.

“I’m trying to replicate precise tone, pitch and volume,” the Doctor said, “which is not as easy as it sounds. I only heard it the one time, and not in the best frame of mind when it happened.”

The Scarecrow selected a vial from a small cache in his belt and loaded it into the sprayer.

“What are you babbling about?” Dirge asked. “Is this an attempt to confuse me, or are you stalling for time until this cretin,” he raised a foot and brought it down hard on the Scarecrow’s arm with a sickening crack. Doctor Crane screamed and clutched at Dirge’s boot with his left hand, trying to free his fractured right. Manson responded by pressing down harder, eliciting more cracks and screams from Crane.

“There’s no point in stalling, Doctor,” Dirge continued. “I’m not going to kill you or Crane. In fact, I’m going to put both of you,” he nodded at the 10th Doctor, “and him back into the time stream where you belong. The conditioning of your former self is almost complete, and sitting like a time bomb in your head waiting to go off. And you will, Doctor. I have already brought glory to the name Manson by making you destroy yours.”

“Well, it certainly pays to plan ahead,” the Doctor replied. “I’m more of a jump in and wing it sort of man, improvising as I go and being ridiculously clever.

“I’d have escaped by now,” he went on, “but my sonic screwdriver is over there. So I have to find another way to get the exact sound I need. Bearing that in mind, I have only three things left to say.

“One, Doctor Crane, the offer still stands.

“Two, I have something in the inside coat pocket of my blazer that will destroy you, Dirge Manson.

“And three, in the right-hand outer pocket of that same jacket, there’s someone who wants a word with you.”

The Doctor whistled again, unnaturally loud and intense. As he did so, the holoprojector in his coat pocket re-activated, and the solid-light hologram of River Song burst forth. She took in her surroundings, and put two and two together very quickly.

“You,” River said. Not ‘dear brother’ or ‘sweetie’ or anything that bore any scorn, familiarity or affection. This was the side of River that few witnessed and lived to speak of.

Dirge Manson, caught off guard, reacted a half-second too late. River’s fists hit his jaw in rapid succession, driving him back and leaving him open to a kick in the crotch. Dirge fell to his knees, howling in agony, and River allowed herself a humourless smile of satisfaction.

It was a mistake, but she paid very little for it. Dirge lunged forward and struck her in the stomach, then followed with an uppercut that might have broken her jaw. If she’d had a jaw. She was a light construct and couldn’t be broken, nor could she feel any pain. 

River blocked Dirge’s next punch and drove the underside of her left palm into the underside of his chin. She followed up with a kick to the solar plexus, knocking him through the doorway and out into the corridor.

“River,” the Doctor said, “I hate to interrupt, but I’d really like to get out of this chair now...”

River Song gave no indication that she’d heard him; she went straight out the door after Manson.

“At least pass me my screwdriver!” the Doctor called after her, and he tugged at his restraints in frustration.

“Do you mean this?” the Scarecrow asked, holding up the instrument in question with his good hand. “Let’s revisit the terms of our deal, shall we?”

**Author's Note:**

> Continued in:
> 
> Part 12: The Wrath of River Song


End file.
